Another CCNA home lab question!

Muhammed H

Dear experts, is the following lab kit enough to practice all ccna v3 stuffs?

Cisco CCENT CCNA Home Lab Kit | eBay

MAC_Addy

I think this is a good kit, a bit expensive. I would piece meal this together if you can potentially buy them separately. I don't know what type of learner you are, but for me, buying a lab really wasn't worth it. Just use GNS3 and/or Packet Tracer.

I did notice, your certs states that you already have CCNA?

clarson

no that isn't a good lab to purchase.

the ios on the routers is 12.2. you want at least a version of 12.4

The routers have a single 10mb ethernet port.
you need a 10/100 port to do intervlan routing, ie no router on a stick
books teach nat/pat using a router with 2 ethernet ports. so you cant follow the examples in the book.

those switches only support the standard ios features which don't include rapid spanning tree

So, there are a lot of things that will be on the test that you cant do with that equipment.

Muhammed H

MAC_Addy wrote: »

I think this is a good kit, a bit expensive. I would piece meal this together if you can potentially buy them separately. I don't know what type of learner you are, but for me, buying a lab really wasn't worth it. Just use GNS3 and/or Packet Tracer.

I did notice, your certs states that you already have CCNA?

Well I did ccna about 4 years back and therefore I'm kinda familiar with Ccna topics. Yes you are right, PT/GNS3 are more than enough to pass the ccna but what I'm looking for is to use real Cisco equipments which I never did before.

Muhammed H

clarson wrote: »

no that isn't a good lab to purchase.

the ios on the routers is 12.2. you want at least a version of 12.4

The routers have a single 10mb ethernet port.
you need a 10/100 port to do intervlan routing, ie no router on a stick
books teach nat/pat using a router with 2 ethernet ports. so you cant follow the examples in the book.

those switches only support the standard ios features which don't include rapid spanning tree

So, there are a lot of things that will be on the test that you cant do with that equipment.

Can you suggest something better? What I'm thinking as alternative is to buy individual devices rather than buying a bundle. But can't decide which router/switches should I go for!

WastedHat

It says "latest IOS" but thats not true, everything is on IOS 12 which will get you by but IOS 15 is recommended. You could upgrade the images but it looks like you would need to upgrade the flash/DRAM before you could do that. Here's a paragraph from the ICND1 offical cert guide:

"Cisco first introduced these enhanced ACL editing features in named ACLs only, and slowly added them to numbered ACLs as well. This section examines these great ACL editing features that have been around in IOS since Version 12.3, which as of the writing of this book, is now a relatively old IOS version."

Those routers are on IOS 12.2 so according to that paragraph you won't be able to do named ACL editing which is a really handy feature.


Also note that only one router has two serial connections so your router WAN topology would look like this [ Router1 --- Router2 --- Router3 ], Router1 and Router3 won't be able to talk to each other without going through Router2. If you're going to get 3 routers I'd say its worth while to have the ability to set them up in a triangular topology where each router is able to talk to each other and you can practice redundancy, so you would need extra WIC cards and cables.

Personally I wouldn't go for this kit. In my home lab I have 2 routers and 2 switches on IOS 15 which probably costs the same as three IOS12 routers/switches. If I need more complex topologies I simulate/emulate and it's been enough to do CCNA. You could also do a mix of IOS 12/15.


I found this really helpful when I was looking for a lab. Their kits are over priced comapred to ebay but theres loads of good info on there:

https://www.certificationkits.com/lab-suggestions/cisco-lab-suggestions/

WastedHat

Also don't trust what the sellers on ebay tell you. Theres loads of listings that say the lab will be plenty for CCNA but it's not. Best thing to do is check out that link and do a bit of research. Then look at the specs on ebay so you know what you're getting. A lot of the time I had to message sellers because they don't list the full spec as well.

clarson

well it isn't so much which hardware to purchase. But, what version of the ios so you want to run. then get the hardware that will run that ios.
pretty much for the ccna version 12.4 is good enough. for the ccnp, your going to want ios version 15.

The 2950's are good enough for the ccna. But, not the just plain ole 2950 like in the lab you pointed out. get the c/g/t model because they support the enhanced version of the ios which includes rapid spanning tree.

for routers you want 10/100 ethernet ports. at least one router with 2 10/100 ethernet ports.
at least 12.4 version of the ios with feature set of advipservices (needed for ipv6).
and enough ram and flash to load that ios.
for the new exam there isn't frame relay. So, at a minimum you need two serial interfaces to do ppp. You will need 4 serial interfaces to do a point to point frame relay connection. 1 serial interface in 2 routers and 1 router with 2 serial interfaces.

There is a lot of equipment that meet these minimums. and a lot that don't. Ones that do, usually aren't any more expensive than ones that don't.

and of course, better equipment will work also. But, will be more expensive.

and if shipping is expensive, look at 1841 routers and 8 port 2960 switches. That are small and light.

looks like the images are going to be included. I was going to delete them. but doesn't look like i can.

anyway, that is a lab that I sold recently for $180.

has 2 2950T switches. 2 2600xm routers and 1 2801 router.
the 2600xm routers are running 12.4T and the 2801 router has version 15 of the ios.
all the router ethernet interfaces are 10/100. each router has 2 10/100 ethernet interfaces. They have the 4 serial interfaces. the routers have the adventerprise ios feature set. and a lot of cables included.

There isn't a 3rd switch or rack mounts or a rack like in the lab you were asking about.
but you can do alot more with this lab. and the cost isn't much different.

and being i'm posting pictures. the last pic is another lab that I have for sale.
2 2960 switches and 3 2800 routers. includes the rack and everything in it for $300.
everything is running version 15 of the ios.
it doesn't cost that much to go from equipment that can't run version 15 of the ios to equipment that can.

clarson

here is more what your wanting to purchase:
CCNA Lab kit | eBay

The switches in that lab run the enhanced ios. So, you can do rapid spanning tree.

They don't say what version of the ios is on the routers. but, they can run version 15 of the ios if you have it.
each router has 2 10/100 ethernet ports. So, you can do intervlan routing. And, do nat/pat like the examples books show you.
a little light on serial wics. And, you should get a 3rd router for doing labs.

as you can see, better equipment is not much more expensive than the lab referenced.